Evaluation Engineering - 32

TECHNOLOGY INSIGHTS

ROBOTICS FORGE
THEIR WAY INTO THE
21ST CENTURY
By Ken Cormier, Managing Editor
Robots are evolving at warp speed,
advancing as quickly as human
imagination and intelligence can carry
them. Improvements in materials and
electronic guts, coupled w ith the
Promethean promise of AI, are giving
birth to a strange new world that blurs
the edges of what it means to be human.
With the capabilities of learning, perception, language, problem-solving, and
logical reasoning, robots are muscling
their way into the human experience.
Here are a few recent news snippets related to robotic development:

data, and more. "Regardless
of where investments are
made-brick or click-it's
all connected and shows
that brick is here to stay
and robots are part of its
future," Mirza said in the
article. He further said
that once robots operate
to scale, they "will facilitate a truly connected
supply chain and drive
efficiencies and insights the industry is
starved for."2

Robots rush in where
humans fear to tread

Enter the androids

As part of a larger effort to bring robots
into every area of operations, the U.S.
Army has unveiled two new bots soon to
be introduced into its ranks. The Small
Multipurpose Equipment Transport is a
"robotic mule" to carry a squad's load on
dismounted patrols. The SMET, which can
be manned or unmanned, can carry 1,000
pounds and operates over a distance of
60 miles in a 72-hour period.
The other bot, the Common Robotic
System (CRS-H), is a heavy robot designed to help bomb technicians. It has
enhanced capabilities to detect, identify,
access, render safe, exploit, and dispose
of heavy explosive ordnance, according
to the Army.1

'Cleanup on Aisle 4'
In a recent article on Robotics Business
Review, Georges Mirza writes that forces of the robot industry are positioning
themselves for employment in the retail
world, in the very near future, for image
recognition, to maximize space, efficiently move and replenish inventory, collect

EVALUATION ENGINEERING JANUARY 2020

The company Promobot has taken the
anthropomorphic robot another step
along with the introduction of Robo-C.
This robot, which can be made to look
like an individual person, is unable to
walk, but it has 18 moving parts in its
face. The company claims that the Robo-C
has more than 600 micro facial expressions and limited movement and could
be useful in homes and workplaces. As of
October, four Robo-Cs were being built by
Promobot: one to scan passports and other functions; one replication of Einstein
for an exhibition; and two android versions of a Middle-Eastern family's patriarch to greet guests. Price for this robot
is between $20k and $50k, dependent on
options and customized appearance. 3

IKEA assembly, breaking
eggs, Rock Paper Scissors
The dreaded, frustrating assembly of
a piece of IKEA furniture may become
a thing of the past. Researchers in
Singapore have fabricated a set of robotic
arms that are able to assemble an IKEA
chair in 20 minutes. The robot employs

ID 123066216 © Kittipong Jirasukhanont | Dreamstime.com

3D cameras to identify parts and then assembles them.
U.K. company Moley has developed a
robotic kitchen that contains dexterous
arms that are able to grasp utensils, crack
eggs, measure ingredients, and do dishes.
Hundreds of recipes from around the globe
can be downloaded from an electronic library into this robot and replicated.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo
have developed Janken robot, which is
unerringly unable to lose a game of Rock
Paper Scissors against a human being.
This is not due to the robot's ability at
prediction-it cheats. It uses high-speed
recognition to see what shape the human
hand is about to form-inside a thousandth of a second.4
REFERENCES

1. The Army Times, "Soldiers soon to see robotic
mules and tougher bomb bots in the field,"
Nov. 23, 2019
2. Robotics Business Review, "Retail Robots are
Here to Stay - Start Preparing Now," Nov.
25, 2019
3. CNBC, "Human-like androids have entered
the workplace and may take your job," Oct.
3, 2019
4. National Post, "Ten outrageous things robots
can do right now, from cooking to building
IKEA furniture," Nov. 25, 2019

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